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Published: August 15th 2007
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The traditional "first day of school" picture
We have 8 such photos, taken annually at our front porch in Seattle. This year we get the Guatemalan version. The first day of school wasn’t just a big deal for Lucas and Grace.
All of us were a little nervous about this important step. Julio (who works for Hugo) picked us up at 7:30 for the ten minute drive and then we sat in the lobby near the secretaries’ desks waiting for the director to arrive. It was fun to notice all of the similarities between here and home. The two secretaries clearly run the place! Parents and kids racing in and out with questions to answered, calls to be made, projects to be stored and problems to be solved. After a little while, the vice-principal picked up the two kids and delivered them to their classrooms. Grace will be in 5th grade and Lucas will join the 6th grade thru the end of their school year (Oct 24). In January, they’ll both move up with their new classmates. This way they can spend the next few months just trying to soak up the language without it "counting" academically at the school, before they get a little more serious with their real grade levels in January.
We got to stay for a bit and see their school assembly complete
Waiting for the vice-principal to take the kids to their class
How's that for looking excited about their first day of school? with singing the national anthem. Our kids didn’t stick out as much as we expected and both of them looked OK as we headed for home.
While the kids were at school, we got and our rent paid, picked up a printer and hit the bank. Steve even took a couple of business calls with new clients. He’s able to use Skype internet phone service to make calls and his clients don’t know (or don’t care) that he’s in Antigua vs our house in Seattle.
While Steve was on his business calls, I attacked the cell phone issue. Here is what little we know about cell phones here: Get a cheap phone from the Moviestar cell provider (we picked out the cheapest for less than $20 apiece) and then just buy minutes from the many Moviestar kiosks around the city. So far, so good.
As you may have read in yesterday's post, finding out our
own numbers was not quite so intuitive. For the life of us, we couldn't find an entry anywhere about "display your number" or any such item. After spending Sunday evening studying the manual (there are a
lot of new words to learn
The next day, the kids in uniform
Uh, something tells me they're not the Uniform Type. in a cell phone manual), we at least had the ability to call out (and hence made some unintentional prank calls). So during Steve's business call, I decided to call our real estate agent Miguel and ask him to look at his caller ID and tell me what it said. He sounded a little perplexed at my request ("is this how these gringos pass their time?"), but told me my phone number. A HA, now we were getting somewhere! I then picked up Steve's phone, dialed my newly discovered number and VOILA, now I had Steve's number on my own caller ID. Yippee! We are now the proud owners of functioning cell phones. Of course, there they sit silent on our outside patio because a) we don't know enough people to really call us and b) if you take them inside our mostly stone/concrete home you'll lose service. But hey, it does feel good to have some ability to communicate with each other when we go different ways in the city.
When we picked up the kids at 2pm, both were visibly relieved that the day had gone so well. Grace hadn’t eaten all day because she got pulled
Grace tries to avoid me taking her picture
Problem a) it's a uniform. Problem b) it's a SKIRT. into “some kind of tag game” during lunch and didn’t know how to say she was hungry in Spanish. Lucas ranked the day an “8 or 9” on a 10 point scale. That was good news for all of us! Both kids have half of their classes in English and half in Spanish. At least some of their classmates are already bilingual, having lived in the states at some point, but the language of the playground is definitely Spanish and both kids agree that they’ll need to develop their language quickly. We stopped at the school uniform store on the way home to pick up clothes for the kids. Cesar, the owner of the store is also a dad at the school and his son is in Lucas’ class. He gave us his card with an offer of help if we ever need anything. It really is a small town feel here. With uniforms in hand, we hit our favorite bakery for coffee and a snack. A great start for sure!
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Scott Bryant
non-member comment
This look like fun!!!
Sonja, Thanks for creating a blog, so we can all stay up to day on what you're up to. Antigua looks beautiful and the kids look so cute. There must be so many little things to deal with that you didn't expect. The cell phone story is great. We look forward to a lot more entries and pictures. Keep them coming!